12-07-2004, 03:30 PM
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NEC Wants to Put a Stop to Unlocking Mobile Phones
"Right now there�s sort of an unwritten rule about unlocking your handset so it�ll work with a different carrier than the one you bought it from�the carriers and cellphone companies won�t necessarily make it easy for you, but they also won�t stop you from doing it, either. That might be changing. NEC is threatening to sue several companies in the UK that are offering to unlock NEC�s ThreePay cellphones for people. Ostensibly they�re doing this to protect their intellectual property (something to do with proprietary software on the phone), but can we just admit that the real reason they�re doing this is to stop people from buying a heavily-subsidized phone from 3 and then jumping ship to another carrier? Carriers hate unlock phones since it makes it harder for them to make back those subsidies that they use to lure new subscribers in the first place."
This is a little confusing. If NEC is worried about their intellectual property, SIM unlocking a phone is not going to effect that. Application unlocking would. SIM unlocking is just going to allow people to take their phones to another carrier. However, NEC shouldn't care about that, since they've already made the sale to the carrier. So regardless of the subsidies that are offered, NEC has already been paid. So if SIM unlocking is the issue, I would expect the carrier should be suing, and not NEC. What do you think? Am I totally off base here?
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